10 Biggest Dangers To Gaming Right Now (From A Dev's Perspective)

We all love a bit of nostalgia, myself included. I was born in 1984, so I remember when the world was sepia-toned and we all played games of Catch-A-Pterasaur with stone-tipped spears.

But nostalgia is also one of the single most effortless concepts for companies to monetise, and the gaming sector may be one of the most relentless offenders - in 2017, remakes, remasters and reimaginings were estimated at around a fifth of bigger publishers’ total revenue, but industry analysts believe this could be as much as even a quarter by 2026.

And you’ve got to look at it from the perspective of the purse-holder - if you can say to your potential customer, “how rubbish is this global recession, right? How rubbish is paying a mortgage and filling out tax forms, eh? Remember when you were younger and played Crash Bandicoot? That was great, eh? Well here’s your childhood again, for $60. Here’s that feeling,” and know they’re going to bite every time, why on Earth would you opt instead to make a brand new game that doesn’t have that manipulation-factor built-in?

It makes great business sense, then, that fewer risks are taken and more remasters/remakes find their way onto our stores.

But with that comes a rather stinging caveat - fewer resources are allocated to new games, new experiences for individuals to experience together for the first time. With the world seemingly in the unflushed toilet of god’s irritable bowel flatmate (that ethereal entity who only eats grated cheese on top of microwavable jalfrezis), it can be tempting to only buy the tried-and-tested games from your youth (now at 4K!) - the comfort of nostalgia is seemingly irresistible.

But we have to be careful not to overindulge, otherwise we might find looking backwards is all we have left.